SmokeFree Sports Project Report

Children and young people are amongst the most vulnerable groups in society and are highly susceptible to smoking experimentation and addiction. In Liverpool, smoking prevalence is significantly higher than the UK average. Therefore early intervention strategies are required for smoking prevention and cessation. Research has found a negative association between smoking and physical activity. SmokeFree Sports aims to explore whether physical activity and sport can be used to promote the smoke free message to children and young people. SmokeFree Sports is an innovative multi-dimensional campaign that incorporates social-marketing strategies alongside the provision of sports and physical activities to: a) de-normalise smoking among youth b) empower youth to stay smoke free, and c) increase awareness of the dangers of smoking using positive messaging through the medium of sport and physical activity. This project is delivered across Liverpool and aims to reduce the prevalence of smoking and prevent the uptake of smoking in children and young people. The initiative, which is managed by Liverpool John Moores University in partnership with Liverpool PCT, employs a variety of strategies to promote and deliver the smoke free message to children and young people including a) training sports coaches and teachers to deliver the smoke free message, b) delivering SFS messages in schools and youth clubs through sport and physical activity, c) asking children to sign a pledge to be smoke free, d) support voluntary sports clubs to adopt a smoke free policy on their playing fields, e) encouraging organizations and individuals interested in health and sport to sign up to the SmokeFree Sports Charter and f) signposting children to smoking cessation services

The Coral Reef Condition in Tureloto Beach North Nias Regency North Sumatera Province

The research of coral reef was conducted in May in Tureloto Beach of North Nias, North Sumatera Province. The research was aimed to analyze the condition of coral reef and to observe coral reef base on diversity index, uniformity index and dominance index. The study used survey method by applying Line Intercept Trasect (LIT) which consisting of three main stations. Each station was divided into two sub depths, i, e. 3 and 10 m respectively.The type of coral reef in Tureloto Beach was fringging reef. Coral lifeform's found in the area were Acropora Branching (ACB), Acropora Encrusting (ACE), Acropora Submassive (ACS), Acropora Digitate (ACD), Acropora Tabulate (ACT), Coral Branching (CB), Coral Massive (CM), Coral Encrusting (CME), Coral Submassive (CS), Coral Foliose (CF), Coral Meliopora (CME), Coral Heliopora (CHL) and Coral Mushroom (CMR). The conditions of coral reef at the depth of 3 m was bad with percentage of 19,23%, percentage conditions of coral reef at the depth 10 m is 54,06% with category its good

Persistent spin and charge currents and magnification effects in open ring conductors subject to Rashba coupling

We analyze the effect of Rashba spin-orbit coupling and of a local tunnel barrier on the persistent spin and charge currents in a one-dimensional conducting Aharonov-Bohm (AB) ring symmetrically coupled to two leads. First, as an important consequence of the spin-splitting, it is found that a persistent spin current can be induced which is not simply proportional to the charge current. Second, a magnification effect of the persistent spin current is shown when one tunes the Fermi energy near the Fano-type antiresonances of the total transmission coefficient governed by the tunnel barrier strength. As an unambiguous signature of spin-orbit coupling we also show the possibility to produce a persistent pure spin current at the interference zeros of the transmittance. This widens the possibilities of employing mesoscopic conducting rings in phase-coherent spintronics applications.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, to appear in PR

About the use of nano-therapeutic means in medicine (ro.)

Nanobiotehnology is a relatively new field of research, being the interface between the life sciences and nanotechnology. In this area where the work dimensions are between 1 nm and 100 nm the recovery of biomolecules’ quality and the processes involved it is proposed, in the development of materials or devices with certain medical activity. This bibliographic approach proposes a first foray into nano-therapeutic resources use in the medical field. Are presented sintheticaly the main nanomaterials, their properties and potential applications in nanomedicine, magnetic fluids, their synthezis and stabilization as well as recent advances in this topic

Consanguinity studies and genome research in Mediterranean developing countries

Purpose: Classical studies of consanguinity have taken advantage of the relationship between the gene frequency for a rare autosomal recessive disorder (q) and the proportion of offspring of consanguineous couples who are affected with the same disorder. The Swedish geneticist Gunnar Dahlberg provided the first theoretical formulation of the inverse correlation between q and the increase in frequency of consanguineous marriages among parents of affected children with respect to marriages of the same degree in the general population. Today it is possible to develop a new approach for estimating q using mutation analysis of affected offspring of consanguineous couples. The rationale of this new approach is based on the possibility that the child born of consanguineous parents carries the same mutation in double copy (true homozygosity) or alternatively carries two different mutations in the same gene (compound heterozygosity). In the latter case the two mutations must have been inherited through two different ancestors of the consanguineous parents (in this case the two mutated alleles are not ‘identical by descent’). Patients and methods: Data from the offspring of consanguineous marriages affected with different autosomal recessive disorders were collected by different molecular diagnostic laboratories in Mediterranean countries and in particular in Arab countries, where the frequencies of consanguineous marriages is high, show the validity of this approach. Results: The proportion of compound heterozygotes among children affected with a given autosomal recessive disorder, born of consanguineous parents, can be taken as an indirect indicator of the frequency of the same disorder in the general population. Identification of the responsible gene (and mutations) is the necessary condition to apply this method. Conclusion: The following paper from our group relevant for the present review is being published: Alessandro Gialluisi, Tommaso Pippucci, Yair Anikster, Ugur Ozbek, Myrna Medlej-Hashim, Andre Megarbane and Giovanni Romeo: Estimating the allele frequency of autosomal recessive disorders through mutational records and consanguinity: the homozygosity index (HI) annals of human genetics (in press; acceptance date 1 November 2011) In addition, our experimental data show that the causative mutation for a rare autosomal recessive disorder can be identified by whole exome sequencing of only two affected children of first cousins parents, as described in the following recent paper: Pippucci T, Benelli M, Magi A, Martelli PL, Magini P, Torricelli F, Casadio R, Seri M, Romeo G EX-HOM (EXome HOMozygosity): A Proof of Principle. Hum Hered 2011; 72:45-53